How can dynamic breadcrumbs be achieved with ASP.net MVC?

Question

How can dynamic breadcrumbs be achieved with ASP.net MVC?

If you are curious about what breadcrumbs are:

What are breadcrumbs? Well, if you have ever browsed an online store or read posts in a forum, you have likely encountered breadcrumbs. They provide an easy way to see where you are on a site. Sites like Craigslist use breadcrumbs to describe the user's location. Above the listings on each page is something that looks like this:

s.f. bayarea craigslist > city of san francisco > bicycles

EDIT

I realize what is possible with the SiteMapProvider. I am also aware of the providers out there on the net that will let you map sitenodes to controllers and actions.

But, what about when you want a breadcrumb's text to match some dynamic value, like this:

Home > Products > Cars > Toyota

Home > Products > Cars > Chevy

Home > Products > Execution Equipment > Electric Chair

Home > Products > Execution Equipment > Gallows

... where the product categories and the products are records from a database. Some links should be defined statically (Home for sure).

I am trying to figure out how to do this, but I'm sure someone has already done this with ASP.net MVC. Thanks for any guidance!

Answer 1

There is a tool to do this on codeplex: http://mvcsitemap.codeplex.com/

Edit:

There is a way to drive a SiteMapProvider from a database: http://www.asp.net/Learn/data-access/tutorial-62-cs.aspx

You might be able to modify the mvcsitemap tool to use that to get what you want.

Answer 2

Maarten Balliauw's MvcSiteMapProvider worked pretty well for me.

I created a small mvc app to test his provider: MvcSiteMapProvider Test